Biography
Max Mathews earned recognition as the originator of computer music by coding the earliest audio signals produced through computation, thereby igniting a technological and artistic transformation that persists today. Serving as a telecommunications engineer and amateur violinist in the acoustic and behavioral research division of Bell Telephone Laboratories during the mid-1950s, he received an initial assignment to investigate digital methods for transmitting and capturing speech, yet he recognized that the same techniques could readily support musical composition and reproduction. By 1957 he had devised MUSIC 1, the inaugural program for synthesizing music, thereby converting the computer into an unprecedented instrument theoretically able to create every sound reproducible through a loudspeaker.
Development of MUSIC II followed promptly; the program operated on an IBM 704 and employed assembler code. In 1959 Mathews completed MUSIC III, engineered for the faster and more accessible IBM transistorized 7094 systems that superseded earlier models. Whereas the initial trio of experimental programs relied on assembly language, MUSIC 4—created by Mathews together with Bell colleague Joan Miller—became the first widely adopted computer sound-synthesis application written in Fortran. The swift progression of these projects prompted Mathews to contribute a forward-looking 1963 article to Science in which he foresaw the computer’s emergence as the definitive musical instrument, declaring, “There are no theoretical limits to the performance of the computer as a source of musical sounds.”
Work on MUSIC V concluded in 1968 on IBM 360 machines; the program advanced its predecessor by incorporating re-entrant instruments, meaning an instrument already active within a piece could be reactivated, thereby permitting any sound to be invoked repeatedly. Two years afterward Mathews introduced GROOVE (Generated Real-time Output Operations on Voltage-controlled Equipment), the first comprehensive hybrid music-synthesis system, which enabled a composer or conductor to shape sound during live performance. Running on a Honeywell DDP-224 computer equipped with a basic cathode-ray-tube display plus disc and tape storage, GROOVE generated audio through an interface linking analog equipment and two 12-bit digital-to-analog converters, while its control devices comprised a 24-note keyboard, four rotary knobs, and a rotary joystick.
Mathews subsequently collaborated with inventor Robert Boie on the Radio Baton, a hyperinstrument permitting a user to direct a computer orchestra through simple gestures of a wand within an electromagnetic field. In 1987 he departed research and development to join Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in California as professor of music; in subsequent years he frequently appeared on the lecture circuit, often illustrating the Radio Baton in operation. He also originated another computer-music application named Conductor, while an interactive real-time graphic multimedia program received the name MAX in tribute to him. Remaining engaged with computer-generated music through the 1990s, Mathews anticipated that by 2010 “almost all music will be made electronically, by digital circuits.” In 2008 he received a Qwartz lifetime achievement award (Qwartz d’Honneur). Mathews died in San Francisco on April 21, 2011, from complications of pneumonia at the age of 84.
Development of MUSIC II followed promptly; the program operated on an IBM 704 and employed assembler code. In 1959 Mathews completed MUSIC III, engineered for the faster and more accessible IBM transistorized 7094 systems that superseded earlier models. Whereas the initial trio of experimental programs relied on assembly language, MUSIC 4—created by Mathews together with Bell colleague Joan Miller—became the first widely adopted computer sound-synthesis application written in Fortran. The swift progression of these projects prompted Mathews to contribute a forward-looking 1963 article to Science in which he foresaw the computer’s emergence as the definitive musical instrument, declaring, “There are no theoretical limits to the performance of the computer as a source of musical sounds.”
Work on MUSIC V concluded in 1968 on IBM 360 machines; the program advanced its predecessor by incorporating re-entrant instruments, meaning an instrument already active within a piece could be reactivated, thereby permitting any sound to be invoked repeatedly. Two years afterward Mathews introduced GROOVE (Generated Real-time Output Operations on Voltage-controlled Equipment), the first comprehensive hybrid music-synthesis system, which enabled a composer or conductor to shape sound during live performance. Running on a Honeywell DDP-224 computer equipped with a basic cathode-ray-tube display plus disc and tape storage, GROOVE generated audio through an interface linking analog equipment and two 12-bit digital-to-analog converters, while its control devices comprised a 24-note keyboard, four rotary knobs, and a rotary joystick.
Mathews subsequently collaborated with inventor Robert Boie on the Radio Baton, a hyperinstrument permitting a user to direct a computer orchestra through simple gestures of a wand within an electromagnetic field. In 1987 he departed research and development to join Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in California as professor of music; in subsequent years he frequently appeared on the lecture circuit, often illustrating the Radio Baton in operation. He also originated another computer-music application named Conductor, while an interactive real-time graphic multimedia program received the name MAX in tribute to him. Remaining engaged with computer-generated music through the 1990s, Mathews anticipated that by 2010 “almost all music will be made electronically, by digital circuits.” In 2008 he received a Qwartz lifetime achievement award (Qwartz d’Honneur). Mathews died in San Francisco on April 21, 2011, from complications of pneumonia at the age of 84.